


Karen's Secret

by jenri



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 00:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6543019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenri/pseuds/jenri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An exploration of what Karen Page's secret concerning her brother's death might be, as well as its repercussions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Karen's Secret

Hide-and-seek used to be her favorite game. As a child, she was unusually good at it. It took a while before anyone suspected the broom closet, and by the time it occurred to Kevin to check the perfectly-sized storage space by the kitchen, there was nothing but an empty floor littered with gingersnap crumbs awaiting him.

The first time she shot someone, she looked up at the night sky and imagined a spaceship taking her far away, hiding her far more effectively than a closet. The second time, it’s harder to picture the spaceship when the familiarity of a gun poised over water causes bile to rise in her throat. She’s seen that face before.

When people ask her what brought her to Hell’s Kitchen, she responds, W _hy anyone else lives here. Because this town chose me._ Its tacky chili pepper lights, rotgut swill, and chipped sidewalks are the furthest she could get from Fagan Corners. It’s no Milky Way, but no one will find her here. She believes this until Union Allied places a target on her forehead, and she finally accepts a fact of her life: she will never be safe. Along with this revelation, she reaffirms the promise she made to her brother as he breathed his last. She will not be saved.

She will not be _saved_.

Still.

For the first time in a very long time, she finds peace in the most unexpected of places. The word “brother” is never consciously thought, but there’s only one other person with whom she has laughed quite so freely. It doesn’t take long before she thinks that she can pave a home in Hell’s Kitchen. She tries not to think about the nightmares or how easy it would be to drown her past in whisky. Instead, she tries to see herself the way Foggy and Matt see her–a good person. But at the end of the day, she’s grateful that, despite being lawyers, they don’t ask her a lot of questions.

Then comes Frank Castle. The headlines are calling him the Punisher, and suddenly it’s not about being safe anymore. She doesn’t consider herself particularly religious, but she’s beginning to wonder if the universe isn’t signaling her retribution. When she held Kevin in her arms that night, she didn’t even hesitate as her hand reached for the gun. Even in the rain, she could trace the silhouette of her target clearly. It was only when she approached the body to make sure she hadn’t missed that she saw he wasn’t much older than her brother. No one told her that murder is a deed that pays it forward.

What she does know is that, upon closer inspection, the DA’s files on the Punisher paint a very different picture from the papers. _A cold-blooded psychopath_. That’s what they’re calling him, as if he’s a monster hiding in the shadows, an aberration in the social genome. More and more as she pieces together the puzzle, she sees that he is just a man, in some ways more human than most. And when she uncovers the last piece and sets it into place, the portrait she discovers is not of Frank Castle but of herself. Her brother, caught in the drug trade and trying to protect his sister, and her, hiding the body of the boy who hurt him and who she, in return, hurt.

What would anyone else have done?

When she touched her brother’s hand, it was so cold. As she deposited him into the driver’s seat of the car she sent into the ravine, she tried to say goodbye, but she could not forget the face of the boy who would never get the same chance, his body drifting down the river.

What had she done? If there is hope for Frank Castle, then surely there is hope for her. But if Frank Castle is dead, where does that leave her?

 

 

 

Apparently, with his dog.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested in my theory about Karen Page's past or how I got to the conclusion that I did in this passage, you can check out my thought process here: http://what-a-trashedy.tumblr.com/post/142729987787/karen-pages-secret


End file.
